Proletarians and

Communists
 Difference of Communists from
the other working class
1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different
countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests
of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.

2. In the various stages of development which the struggles of the

working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always
and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
Communists
• The most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties
of every country.
• They have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of
clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the
ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
 Aim of the Communists
• Formation of the proletariat into a class
• Overthrow of bourgeois supremacy
• Conquest of political power by the proletariat
Theory of Communists
• Abolition of private property
-Reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally
acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which
property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom,
activity, and independence.
The property of the petty artisan and of the small
peasant , a form of property that preceded the
bourgeois form.

• There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry

has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying
it daily.
 Property , in its present form, is based on the
antagonism of capital and wage-labour.

-Capital- is a collective product and only by the united action of

many members. Only by the united action of all members of
society, can it be set in motion. It is therefore not a personal, it is
a social,power.
- Capital is converted into common property, into the property of
all members of society, personal property is not thereby
transformed into social property. It is only the social character of
the property that is changed. It loses its class character.
 Wage -labour
• Quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely
requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer.
• Communists want to do is to do away with is the miserable
character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives
merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only insofar as
the interest of the ruling class requires it.
 Bourgeois Society
• Living labour is but a means to increase
accumulated labour
• The past dominates the present.
• Capital is independent and has individuality.
• Abolition of this state of things is called by the
bourgeois, abolition of individuality and
freedom
Communist Society
• Accumulated labour is but a means to widen,
to enrich, to promote the existence of the
labourer.
• The present dominates the past.
• The living person is dependent and has no
individuality.
From the moment when individual property can no longer be
transformed into bourgeois property , into capital, from that
moment individuality vanishes.

Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the

products of society ; all that it does to deprive him of the power to
subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.
• Tautology: There can no longer be any wage-labour when there
is no longer any capital.

• Bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the

disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the
disappearance of all culture.
 Abolition of family
• Bourgeois family, based?
-On capital, on private gain.
-But this state of things find its complement in the practical
absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public
prostitution.
- The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its
complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing
capital.
 Education
• The Communists have not invented the intervention of society
in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that
intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the
ruling class.
 Bourgeois marriage
• In reality a system of wives in common and thus, at the most,
what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that
they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically
concealed, an openly legalized community of women.
 Proletariat
• Must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the
leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so
far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.
• The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still
faster .United action, of the leading civilized countries at least, is
one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.
• In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put
an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put
an end to.
• In proportion as the antagonism, between classes within the nation
vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
 Communism
• Abolishes eternal truths
• Abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting
them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past
historical experience
Communist revolution
• Radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder
that its development involves the most radical rupture with
traditional ideas.
In most advanced countries, the following
will be generally applicable
1. Abolition of property in and application of all rents of land to
public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of
a national bank with the state, by means of a national bank
with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in
the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by
the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the
improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common
plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial
armies, especially for agriculture.
9.Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries;
gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by
more equable distribution of the population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of

child factory labour in its present form. Combination of education
with industrial production etc.
• If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is
compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a
class ; if, by mean of a revolution , it makes itself the ruling
class, and as much sweeps away by force the old conditions of
production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept
away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and
of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own
supremacy as a class.